from Sean Keeley of Awful Announcing,

Over his long career writing for Sports Illustrated, the Rocky Mountain News, the Indianapolis Star, The Athletic, and other outlets, sports columnist Bob Kravitz made sure that readers always knew where he stood on the issue he was writing about....

“I’m pissed I got whacked by The Athletic in early June,” starts Kravitz, who says he will be a contributor for Indianapolis Monthly magazine along with running his own Substack. “Not that it was a great job or anything – it wasn’t; more on that later – but hell, it beat the crap out of unemployment.”

Kravitz joined The Athletic in late 2018, writing at the time that he was “bullish” on the online outlet and that his new role meant “I’ll have the time and the freedom to do those kinds of pieces – columns and features – that have made the last 36 years so fun and satisfying.”

In reality, Kravitz says he found the editorial process at The Athletic to be stifling and hyper-focused on numbers.

“I had some lousy editors (and some great ones, too),” wrote Kravitz. “I was constantly questioning myself: Is this the right story idea? Did I write it well enough to produce the kinds of metrics that were absolutely central to the way we were judged? (Although my metrics were pretty strong when I got dumped; they told me the issue was the small market where I work and the move to more national approach to sports). I never felt wanted there; I felt barely tolerated.”

The 63-year-old says that he was put on “probation” soon after a quadruple bypass surgery in 2020, presumably because he wasn’t hitting his traffic numbers.

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